21–30 of 54 posts
It took me back to the old days of source diving and accumulated knowledge that you carried around in your head.
I've been comparing various platforms and discussing them with ChatGPT—for instance, why Python's execution is slower than JavaScript's V8. It claimed this is due to mtechnical debt and the inability to change because libraries like NumPy bypass public interfaces and access data directly. I'm wondering how much of that is true and what is just a hallucination." Btw: JavaScript seems to have similar complexity issues.…
> Edit: Python has no JIT There are quite a few JITs: JIT-compiler for Python https://pypy.org/ Python enhancement proposal for JIT in CPython https://peps.python.org/pep-0744/ And there are several JIT-compilers for various subsets of Python, usually with focus on numerical code and often with GPU support, for example Numba https://numba.pydata.org/numba-doc/dev/user/jit.html Taichi Lang https://github.com/taichi-de…
See https://docs.python.org/3/whatsnew/3.13.html#an-experimental...
Had to write a fairly substantial native extension to Python a couple years ago and one of the things I enjoyed was that the details were not easily "Googleable" because implementation results were swamped by language level results. It took me back to the old days of source diving and accumulated knowledge that you carried around in your head. https://www.dave.org/posts/20220806_python/
I found that agentic coding tools were quite good at answering my architectural questions; even when their answers were only half correct, they usually pointed me in the right direction. (I didn’t use AI to write code and I wonder if agentic tools would struggle with certain aspects of the codebase like, for instance, the Cambrian explosion of utility macros used throughout.)
Had to write a fairly substantial native extension to Python a couple years ago and one of the things I enjoyed was that the details were not easily "Googleable" because implementation results were swamped by language level results. It took me back to the old days of source diving and accumulated knowledge that you carried around in your head. https://www.dave.org/posts/20220806_python/
I made some small contributions to cpython during the 3.14 cycle. The codebase is an interesting mix of modern and “90s style” C code. I found that agentic coding tools were quite good at answering my architectural questions; even when their answers were only half correct, they usually pointed me in the right direction. (I didn’t use AI to write code and I wonder if agentic tools would struggle with certain aspects o…
I blended the python type system with a large low-level type system (STEP AIM low level types) and a smaller set of higher-level types (STEP ARM, similar to a database view). I already was familiar with STEP, so I needed to really grok what Python was doing under the covers because I needed to virtualize the STEP ARM and AIM access while making it look like "normal" Python.
I've been comparing various platforms and discussing them with ChatGPT—for instance, why Python's execution is slower than JavaScript's V8. It claimed this is due to mtechnical debt and the inability to change because libraries like NumPy bypass public interfaces and access data directly. I'm wondering how much of that is true and what is just a hallucination." Btw: JavaScript seems to have similar complexity issues.…
If we are being very pedantic, languages don't have "speed", only implementations do. Of course in the real life there are de facto implementations and language features give way to better/worse tradeoffs. With that out of the way, Python is basically the de facto glue language. It is very often used to provide a scripting API over lower level C libraries. To be ergonomic in this function, CPython (the major implemen…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Edit: Python has no JIT In 3.14 and up you can enable JIT by setting the env var PYTHON_JIT=1
Who made this JIT? FAcebook?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I made some small contributions to cpython during the 3.14 cycle. The codebase is an interesting mix of modern and “90s style” C code. I found that agentic coding tools were quite good at answering my architectural questions; even when their answers were only half correct, they usually pointed me in the right direction. (I didn’t use AI to write code and I wonder if agentic tools would struggle with certain aspects o…
This was around 2021 so AI code tools had not yet eaten everyone. One of the most interesting challenges was finding the right value judgements when blending multiple type systems. I doubt any agentic coding tool could do it today. I blended the python type system with a large low-level type system (STEP AIM low level types) and a smaller set of higher-level types (STEP ARM, similar to a database view). I already was…
I wish they would just go back to calling it Python, since it’s the Python that everyone knows and uses. No one gets confused over Python the spec and Python the implementation. Every time I see “CPython” i have to double check we’re just talking about Python. I guess they “CPython’ed” back when people thought Jython would take off , and it never did because Java sucks.
I wish they would just go back to calling it Python, since it’s the Python that everyone knows and uses. No one gets confused over Python the spec and Python the implementation. Every time I see “CPython” i have to double check we’re just talking about Python. I guess they “CPython’ed” back when people thought Jython would take off , and it never did because Java sucks.
Just to name alternatives: Cpython, Pypy, jython, ironpython. Then, there quite a few python-likes out there. I wish they would stay precise.
I wish they would just go back to calling it Python, since it’s the Python that everyone knows and uses. No one gets confused over Python the spec and Python the implementation. Every time I see “CPython” i have to double check we’re just talking about Python. I guess they “CPython’ed” back when people thought Jython would take off , and it never did because Java sucks.
JavaScript and Node.js are different too.